Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a camera apparatus and a camera module for a vehicle.
Related Art
In recent years, there have been vehicles in which a camera is disposed on a windshield from within a cabin for the purpose of performing driving assistance control and the like. As a camera for use in a vehicle such as this, an on-board camera described in JP-A-2007-225991 is known. The on-board camera described in JP-A-2007-225991 includes a lens barrel and a case. The lens barrel has a lens and an approximately tube-shaped lens holding portion that holds the lens. The case has a lens barrel holding portion and a case main body portion. The lens barrel holding portion is approximately tube-shaped and holds the lens barrel. The case main body portion is approximately case-like and houses an image sensor therein. An end portion of the lens barrel is fitted into the lens barrel holding portion and fixed at a position at which focus is adjusted.
In general, the on-board camera such as that described above is fixed to a camera case, together with a hood that covers the lens of the on-board camera from below. The camera case to which the on-board camera and the hood are fixed is attached to a supporting member that is disposed on the windshield of the vehicle. The hood that covers the lens from below blocks light entering from below the lens and suppresses a situation in which scenery outside of the range of the angle of view of the on-board camera is reflected in the lens.
Conventionally, the relative position of a light receiving surface of the image sensor relative to an optical axis of the lens has been adjusted by four-axis adjustment. However, in four-axis adjustment, the tilt of the light receiving surface of the image sensor relative to the optical axis of the lens is not adjusted. Therefore, partial blur and the like may occur. Consequently, a six-axis adjustment technique has been proposed. In this technique, the tilt of the light receiving surface of the image sensor relative to the optical axis of the lens is also adjusted.
In the above-described on-board camera, when six-axis adjustment is applied to positioning of the lens barrel relative to the lens barrel holding portion, the lens barrel may tilt relative to the lens barrel holding portion. Here, the windshield of a typical vehicle is sloped. Therefore, when clearance between the camera case and the windshield is small, should the lens barrel tilt upwards, the windshield and the lens barrel come into contact. The camera case cannot be disposed. Consequently, the supporting member is required to be disposed on the windshield such that the clearance between the windshield and the camera case is of a size allowing leeway. However, when the clearance is increased, the hood for blocking light is required to be made larger. When the hood is made larger, the field of view from the windshield is blocked by this extent. Therefore, the hood is preferably small.